


In D.C., Before the War

by InsectKin



Series: The Shadow of War [2]
Category: The Grisha Trilogy - Leigh Bardugo
Genre: Casual Sex, F/M, They're perfect together, Washington D.C., grace is also a jerk, the ambassador's a jerk, the darkling aka ambassador morozova
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-02-10
Updated: 2017-02-10
Packaged: 2018-09-23 08:43:58
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,434
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9648494
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/InsectKin/pseuds/InsectKin
Summary: A backstory for the ambassador and Grace that takes place before The Shadow of War. Contains semi-spoilers but it's kind of hot.





	1. Chapter 1

The song switched from one gritty 80’s tune to another as Grace finished the dregs of her rum and coke. Smoking had been outlawed in D.C. bars years ago, but this one had a haze indicating either that patrons were disregarding the prohibition or that cigarette smoke stuck around far longer and was much worse for you than anyone had thought.

She tilted the remaining ice cube of her drink into her mouth and turned back to her phone and the never-ending stream of email. She’d ducked out of another friend’s engagement party – the third this month, _fuck_ – claiming an urgent work emergency. It was never really a lie, so she had holed up with her phone at a dark table in a shady-looking bar a few blocks away, trying to shake off her lingering irritation.  
  
It really wasn’t the fact that all of her friends were pairing off and getting married that bothered her. It wasn’t even that some of them were producing babies – a pastime that blew her mind, but to each their own. Neither of those things annoyed her as much as how _smug_ they were about it. She couldn’t stand the pitied looks they gave her, the casually probing questions about her nonexistent dating life, the way they’d respond to her dismissive comments with a gentle _Gracie_ …  
  
None of them understood. They worked, they had jobs, but not like Grace. They’d insinuate that she was married to her job (which always prompted her to joke that if she was, the sex was terrible), but they were missing the point. She wasn’t committed to the job; she _was_ the job. She lived and breathed it, the emails and wrangling and intimidation as much a part of her as her fingernails, her hair. Her heartbeat.  
  
She bit down on the ice cube as she read an email from the Chief of Staff of the House Majority Whip, not someone with whom she was overly impressed. She was halfway through with a scathing reply when the table shifted in response to someone occupying the seat across from her.  
  
“Not interested,” she said without pausing in her typing. She’d learned the hard way that it was better to cut off conversation before it began; men in D.C. liked to hear themselves talk and for some reason that tended to involve explaining politics to her – to _her_ , Chief of Staff of the senior senator of one of the largest states.  
  
Yeah. She didn’t have time for their bullshit. 

“In what?" 

She stopped typing and looked up, surprised and showing it only a little. "Ambassador Morozova?”  
  
A corner of his lip curled in acknowledgement, and the bartender came over and set a couple glasses of vodka on the table in front of him. He lifted one, offering it to Grace, who eyed him for a moment before locking the screen of her phone and taking the drink.  
  
She’d seen him earlier that afternoon during a heated discussion of policy in that particular section of Asia, a region that generated a lot of headaches for the Senate Foreign Affairs committee. The debates were contentious and tedious, so Grace was always glad when the Ravkan ambassador showed up – he was ridiculously attractive and kind of an asshole. She appreciated both those things.  
  
He picked up the other glass of vodka and tilted it towards her. She clinked hers against his and they shot it simultaneously.  
  
The drink burned hard going down and she thought about coughing, decided not to. “The vodka here up to Ravkan standards?”  
  
“Not at all.” His response had the same practiced dispassion that he did when she’d seen him earlier that day, though there was something else in his demeanor she couldn’t quite place. He sat on the chair in the dingy bar like he was sitting on a throne.  
  
“What brings you here?”  
  
“Same thing as you, I imagine.”  
  
She raised an eyebrow. “Hiding from Danielle’s engagement party?”  
  
“Hiding.” His expression shifted in a way she couldn’t put her finger on and she realized he hadn’t broken eye contact since he sat down. He indicated the empty space around him without turning. “I’ve left security behind for the evening. I find I miss a certain amount of … privacy.”  
  
She cocked her head. “Weren’t you in the military before this?”  
  
“I was a commander,” he replied, as if that answered the question she was asking.  
  
She glanced around the bar – the large bodyguard she usually saw him with would have been a conspicuous presence and was definitely not here. Her lips twisted. “I promise not to call President Vakhrov and tell him his ambassador’s on the loose.”  
  
“My career and I thank you.”  
  
Two patrons had gotten into a large shouting match in the back of the bar, which served to emphasize how little the ambassador fit in. As much as the idea of him touring this entire side of the Potomac for a pub he could hide and drink vodka in amused her, she was aware that he hadn’t come for the alcohol. That left the obvious option. “Senator Lantsov’s already made her decision on how she’s voting on the bill.”  
  
“I didn’t come here to talk about work.”  
  
She scrunched her brow in exaggerated curiosity. “Do you talk about other things?”  
  
“Not really,” he acknowledged. That look, again. “But I’m willing to try.”  
  
“Well I sure as hell don’t have any practice. But if it wasn’t vodka or work that brought you to this shitty bar, why come?”  
  
One side of his mouth tipped upwards. “If you don’t like the venue,” he replied evenly, “I have no attachment to staying.” He took his gaze away from hers to look her up and down, in case she had missed the implication.  
  
She hadn’t. She returned the once-over as she thought about work, about that stupid email she had been in the middle of replying to. She’d blocked off the evening for the party, so while there was work she _could_ do there was nothing she _needed_ to … And it’s not like any journalists were hanging around a bar like this one, so there was no one to see them. There were worse ideas.    
  
She tilted her head back on the splintered wood of the booth, examined him through narrowed eyes. “Your place or mine?”  
  
“Depends how you feel about going through embassy security.”  
  
She snorted. “Mine then.”  
  
He gave a low laugh and they made their way to the entrance of the bar. He pushed the door open, holding it for her. “After you, Miss Chiang.”  
  
“Grace, please.”  
  
“Grace,” he amended as he followed her out. He lifted a hand for a taxi – he really _had_ ditched the escort tonight – and a minute later he was opening the taxi door for her.  
  
Her mouth twisted at the irony of chivalry. “Thank you, Ambassador.” She was halfway into the taxi when she stopped and looked up at him. “Is there something I should call you other than Ambassador?”  
  
He lifted his lips in return. “No,” he answered, putting his hand lightly on her back as she got into the back seat and he slid in beside her, closing the door firmly. “Ambassador’s fine.”


	2. Chapter 2

They took the six flights of stairs to Grace’s condo in silence, the ambassador a few steps behind her. She typically made a habit of avoiding elevator interactions with her neighbors by being on her phone, but tonight she’d decided it was better to not be seen at all.

She unlocked the door, the feeling of someone behind her as she did strange but reassuring. It had been a while since she’d opened her door for anyone, let alone a man – the last one had been Dan, an acquaintance who worked at the Pentagon and who she’d done a good deal of physical acquainting with over the last couple years whenever they were both in D.C.

Dan had called four months ago to let her know he’d gotten a girlfriend – an actual girlfriend, as if that was some sort of fucking accomplishment that he’d needed either of their Ivy League degrees for. “Someone who meets my emotional needs,” he’d explained, tone even enough that the emphasis on _emotional_ almost wasn’t there.

“Cute,” she’d replied before tuning out the rest of the conversation as irrelevant. She wasn’t sure why she was thinking about Dan now of all times – she certainly hadn’t thought about him much except on the nights when she was home at a reasonable hour with some extra energy to burn. Now that she _was_ thinking about it, though, four months was an unnecessarily long time to be without sex. She should do this at least once a quarter.

She dropped her keys on the counter inside the doorway and the ambassador followed her in, brushing past her and heading to the large window in the living room. Grace’s parents had been after her for years to own real estate; she’d finally caved in and found a one-bedroom condo with the best view that $400,000 could buy.

Turns out that view was pretty spectacular.

On a night like tonight, clear and soft, the view from the window was everything was she loved about this city – the streets with their white-and-red blurs of traffic, the Capitol, the dim lights of the Washington Monument. She could see her office from here. Not much more a girl needs.

She left him at the window and went into her small, open kitchen. “You want a drink?”

“Whatever you’re having.”

She didn’t make the mistake of looking in the refrigerator; she knew there was nothing there. She opened one cabinet, another, pushing empty boxes of cereal and stale crackers out of the way. She finally found a bottle of amaretto, and that she poured into two glasses taken directly out of the drying rack. She handed him a glass when he entered the kitchen.

He nodded his thanks. “Did you just move in?”

“November.”

He glanced around. “You don’t have much for having lived here six months.”

“Nope.” She took a sip of her drink, the sweetness almost burning. “I moved in the November before that.”

He lifted a brow so slightly. “And the only furniture you have is a couch and coffee table.”

“I’ve been busy. I have a bed too, don’t worry.” That reminded her: “Give me a minute.”

She drained the rest of her glass and left it on the counter, walking past the ambassador to her bedroom. She flicked on the light and sighed as she made her way to the bed – it was worse than she’d remembered.

“If you had more furniture you wouldn’t need to use your bed for storage.” The ambassador had materialized in the doorway behind her as she scooped up papers from all over her comforter – and they were _all_ over. It was pretty clear that she had been confined to one small corner of the bed for all of recent history.

“As interesting as it is to hear your thoughts on decor,” she replied as she shoved the papers into a dresser drawer, “I’d like you more with fewer opinions and fewer clothes.”

He gave the same low laugh that he had at the bar – just enough to register amusement, not enough for it to actually show – but he didn’t move from where he leaned against the doorframe. She straightened, the bed finally in a semi-usable state. “Well?”

He uncrossed his arms and indicated the wall. “Would you like the lights off?”

“Helllll no,” she replied. “I don’t do this nearly often enough to not watch.”

She thought he might have smiled as his hands reached for her waist, but she didn’t have time to examine him properly before she was thrown back onto the mattress. She was far from petite – almost six feet when she wore her four inch heels – and she was unaccustomed to being thrown around by men. The ambassador stood at the foot of the bed, loosening his tie, and she propped her elbows behind her to watch the slow reveal of his Ravkan-military-grade chest. If she’d had any desire to think about Pentagon Dan at that point, the comparison would not have been in Dan’s favor.

She cocked her head once he was finished discarding his jacket, shirt, and tie. “No gun?” He didn’t reply, eyes focused on her mouth. She shrugged and moved her elbows down lower in the process. “I figured you might carry one when you ditched your security.”

“I wasn’t planning on a shootout. And for anything in close quarters, I’m good enough with my hands.”

“ _Are_ you.”

He reached down and lifted her ankle, flicking off first one black heel, then the other. His knee fit between hers and he placed his palms on either side of her head as she leaned back into the mattress. Grace had the absurd urge to tug at the dark hair that fell in front of his face or run her fingers on the scars across the bridge of his nose. She did neither.

They were close enough that their breath mingled. “Your turn.” The next moment an arm was beneath her back and in a smooth motion he’d flipped them, positioning himself beneath her, her legs straddling his hips. “Strip.”

She unbuttoned her own shirt, already feeling the heat from where her skirt had ridden up, pushing her bare legs against his sides. She examined him as she undressed, the outlines of his muscles, the planes of his face. She was several years older than him, she decided. At least.

He misread her expression as she threw her shirt onto the floor, followed closely by her bra. “Second thoughts?”

She shook her head. “Most ambassadors aren’t quite so young.”

He didn’t smile, exactly. “I’m not most ambassadors.”

_I can see that._ She leaned towards him, bracing herself on an elbow. “And I’ve never fucked a foreign dignitary before.”

Their bodies were close now, their breath heavy. He ran his fingertips down her chest in a way that was somehow both familar and very, very hot.

“You’ll have to tell me how it is.”

His mouth met hers; hands and lips brushed and her skin tingled against his warm hands, sizzled lightly between his teeth. She felt herself sinking in deeper, and in a few moments she knew she’d lose her ability to think coherently, followed closely by her ability to speak.

She took a breath has he pushed her against the mattress, a last moment of clarity. She exhaled a smile. “Sure thing, Ambassador.”


End file.
